My first quarter at the University of Minnesota, in the fall of 1948, included a class offered by the History Department, on folklore.

The instructor, in explaining the work to be done that quarter, said, "I hope you didn't expect me to sit up here and twang my guitar at you!" (In fact, I had hoped for just that scenario!)

As I recall (it has been more than sixty years, you know), most of what we studied was actually American folklore, though I remember we did cover some of the classical Scottish and English ballads. But I remember being struck with the fact that there were a lot of stories from the newspapers and books of the first half of the 19th Century, which made little claim of being reports of then-ancient beliefs, practices, etc.

I remember the stories of Judge Roy Bean, Joe Magarac, Paul Bunyan, and perhaps even the Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Also the whoop-and-holler bragging allegedly indulged in by frontier braggarts and bullies. Most of this class made no pretense of being anything other than the creation of some writer, printed on such-and-such a date in such-and-such newspaper.

But we were required, every week, to submit an item of folklore (perhaps folksong) which we personally had collected "in the field", as it were, which item was required to be written up in a prescribed format, which included where and how, when, and from whom we learned it, how it was used or observed, how widespread we had found it to exist, and perhaps other details. I remember classmates reporting weather rhymes, childhood games and songs, details of good and bad luck superstitions, and on and on.

I recall submitting a song from high school times, which I told the instructor and class I had never heard except in the bus on high school band bus trips. Classmates were aghast: "That's not folklore!" on the ground that it was just what kids in school sang. The instructor assured them that, yes, that would be folklore.

(My Beautiful Wife has just insisted that I insert what I can remember of this song, for reasons that will become apparent, so here is a little bit of Poor Willie:)

I said goodbye to Willie, my heart was sad indeed
He was drivin' a railroad engine with a load of mustard seed
He was doin' ninety per, his brakes was busted down
They carried off my Willie in a coffin painted brown!

Willie went to a rest'rant to get his evenin' meal
The waiter there, he was too slow; Willie called the man a heel.
And then when Willie's dinner came, there was ars'nic in his jello
They carried off my Willie in a coffin painted yellow!

There were three more verses, each ending with Willie being borne away in a different colored coffin.

And here, at length, is my shamefaced admission, sixty years late: That song was fakelore, not folklore!   My best friend and I had made it up between us in high school, and I don't think either of us ever sang it to anyone else or let it out of the bag until I found myself without an item for my rigidly demanded weekly folklore report requirement for that class. As far as I know, that report may remain to this day in the files of the History Department at the University of Minnesota, driving some innocent grad student nuts, trying to find connections to other folkloric items (hopefully more authentic).

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

Dave Oesterreich